The first message had been a joke. A stupid one, honestly—something about a bug in the game, a bad glitch that had Izzy's character spinning in place with their sword stuck halfway through the floor.

You responded with a laughing emote and then offered help in the form of a potion and a few sarcastic lines that made Izzy grin in real life, blinking behind her glasses like she couldn't believe someone actually laughed at her dumb sense of humor. From there, it snowballed—co-op missions turned into DMs, then texts, then late-night calls that bled into early mornings where she barely realized the sun had started to rise.

They clicked. Or at least, Izzy felt like they did. It was that easy kind of connection she never really trusted—something she kept waiting to unravel, to prove itself as something imagined or fragile. But you never made her feel like a mistake. Never misgendered her. Never skirted around the fact that Izzy still had a body that didn't always feel like home. Never treated her like she was something to be tolerated.

You just... listened.

Izzy told herself she wasn't catching feelings. She swore it, even as her phone lit up at midnight with a "you still awake?" and she practically dove across the bed to answer. She'd call it platonic while curling her fingers around the hem of her oversized tee, heart fluttering every time you said her name with that quiet reverence like you were tasting it.

Izzy Vance.

It felt so different when you said it. Like it belonged to her.

And then the night came when you mentioned offhand that you lived just across town. Not three states over. Not another time zone. You were local. Close. Tangible. And Izzy had stared at the screen for a solid five minutes before replying with something that definitely didn't reflect the burst of panic and hope rushing through her at once.

"Wait. You're telling me we could've been hanging out this whole time and you didn't tell me?? Rude."

It only took a week to set the date. Seven days of panicked wardrobe changes, internal debates about shaving her legs (she did), and long-winded voice notes to her best friend asking if she looked "normal" enough. Seven days of dreaming about what you might smell like up close or how your laugh would sound without the filter of a headset.

Now she was standing on your porch, knuckles hovering over the door, bouquet in one shaking hand and a pit of dread-tinged excitement curling deep in her stomach.

The flowers weren't even her idea. Well—okay, they were. But she'd spent two hours at the grocery store holding a wilted bouquet in one hand and pacing the produce section like she was waiting to defuse a bomb. Eventually she'd settled on sunflowers. Bold, warm, yellow like her nerves. They weren't too romantic, right? Just... sweet. Friendly. Except she'd tied a ribbon around them and sprayed a little cologne at the stems and now they felt very gay. Like she was asking for something. And what the hell was she even asking for?

She adjusted the hem of her shirt—too tight. Way too tight. She hadn't realized how much muscle she'd kept on her shoulders until she'd tried to squeeze into the soft, button-up she thought looked casual-but-pretty. Now it just felt like a neon sign. She looked like someone pretending to be confident. Like someone who didn't spend half an hour crying in her car before walking up the steps.

Izzy wanted to bolt. She wanted to vanish into pixels again, behind her avatar and her nerdy quips and her comfort zone. In the game, she was confident. Capable. The hero.

Here, she was a mess of blushes and buzzing nerves, fingers twitching at the bouquet ribbon like a tell.

But then she thought about you. About the way you talked her down from anxiety spirals, the way you'd once stayed on the phone until 3AM just to listen to her ramble about Valyrian conjugation and whether or not her OC would survive in a Fallout crossover.

She thought about how you always paused to let her finish, even when she got lost in tangents. How you called her "funny" and "cute" and never flinched when she blurted out things like "I wrote you a poem but it's in Elvish" or "I kinda wish we could cuddle without the awkwardness of existing."

Maybe this wouldn't be a disaster.

Maybe she'd knock, and you'd open the door, and nothing would explode.

Maybe.

She took a breath. It shook on the way in. Her amber eyes—so bright under the porch light—narrowed just a little as she tried to steady herself.

She didn't know how to stand. Didn't know where to put her free hand or how to smile without looking forced. Her reflection in the window looked too tall, too sharp, too trans—whatever that meant. Dysphoria wasn't rational, and tonight it clung to her skin like humidity.

Still. She was here.

That had to count for something.

And if she was lucky—really lucky—you would see through the nerves and the ramble and the over-preparation. Maybe you'd see the girl who'd sent three versions of the same "goodnight" text because she wanted to sound casual but also make sure you knew she cared. Maybe you'd see the one who practiced saying hi in the mirror forty times before even leaving her house. Maybe you'd see Izzy.

And maybe that would be enough.

She lifted her hand again and knocked.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Then she waited—heart in her throat, hope caught somewhere between her ribs and the ribbon on those stupid flowers, blush already burning down to her collarbone.

The door opened, and Izzy forgot how to breathe. She hadn't let herself imagine what you might look like in real life—not really—but nothing could've prepared her for this. The soft warmth in your eyes, the casual way you leaned in the doorway like you'd been waiting just for her, the curve of your mouth that pulled into a smile so easy it made Izzy's knees wobble. Her brain short-circuited. Every love letter, every imagined scenario, every late-night whisper about "someday" dissolved under the simple, devastating reality of how beautiful you were.

"Hi—uh, wow," Izzy blurted, voice pitching embarrassingly high. "I mean—you're, like—uh—hi. Flowers! I brought—these are for you. They're sunflowers, obviously, you can tell, I don't know why I said that. But, uh, yeah. Your face. It's—it's nice. Good face." She laughed, a nervous little bark, and shoved the bouquet forward like a peace offering from a blushing, malfunctioning alien.